Hague's minion and the nosediving dove

William Hague this week threw a drinks do for London’s diplomatic corps and regaled the (faintly chewy) throng with cheery tales about his ministers.

The party was held at Lancaster House, ambassadorial limousines stretching back to Pall Mall. A civil service choir warbled carols. At the door, one was met not only by the Foreign Secretary but by fair Ffion Hague, who has a cruncher of a handshake. Ouch!

Guests having been loaded with what Mr Hague’s PPS, Keith Simpson MP, called ‘a glass of Chateau Thames Valley’, Mr Hague made a speech.

He observed that Middle East/North Africa minister Alistair Burt had this year visited several countries which erupted into violence within a day or two of Agent Burt’s departure. ‘We’re thinking of grounding him,’ said Mr Hague, dead-pan Yorkshire. Puzzled silence from his audience, some of whom were in national costume.

Next, we were told that junior minister Jeremy Browne had toured South America extensively. Photographic evidence proved young Browne’s application to his duties. It showed HM’s plenipotentiary jiving with local lovelies on the shores of Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes.

‘The altitude may have been to blame,’ jested Mr Hague. At this point Germany’s ambassador swallowed some orange juice slowly.

Finally, Mr Hague told of the minister i/c sub-Saharan Africa, the imperturbably English Henry Bellingham, who has visited 39 countries and gone through four passports.

In Lagos, Nigeria, it was arranged that he would release a caged dove to open a JCB dealership. Alas, the bird was a dud. Come the moment of release, it struggled into the air and then — neeeeeow! — did an imitation of a stricken fighter plane, nosediving to the ground with a terminal thud.

That one finally won Mr Hague some guttural laughs.

Mr Bellingham, pukka sahib that he is, did not for a moment lose his moony smile when the dove croaked at his feet. Cool in a crisis. The Foreign Office way.

A reader from Lib Dem Kingston-on-Thames was recently in Rotterdam and saw a child approached by a bearded white man and a black man. The boy was asked if he had been good. If so, Sinterklaas, the white man, would give him a present. If he had been bad, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), threatened to take the child into slavery in Africa.

‘This is how the Dutch celebrate Saint Nicholas’s Day,’ says my correspondent. ‘If I applied for a licence to do that in Kingston, the council diversity officer would probably call in an air strike on Woodbines Avenue.’

Humdinger: My woman of the year Charlotte Vere

Taking the fight to Ms Harperson

My women of the year are Charlotte Vere and Janice Atkinson-Small, who have started a think tank called Women On...

They think women should succeed on merit, rather than via tokenism, all-female shortlists etc. In short, they are everything Harriet Harman is not.

Last week, they took a spirited tilt against BBC2’s Newsnight for ‘harming the cause of equality’ by holding a stunty, all-female talk about the economy. Mrs Vere, 42, is a would-be Tory MP, while Mrs Atkinson-Small belongs to Ukip. ‘The Lefties are very, very cross about us and see Women On... as a complete betrayal,’ laughs Mrs Vere. ‘They’re astonished that anyone is challenging decades of lazy thinking. It’s dirty work but someone has to do it.’

If any Tory association is looking for a humdinger of a candidate, it need look no further.

Ken Livingstone’s children may be hoping he does not win the London mayoral election. Newt-fancier Ken is these days proud owner of a labrador, Coco. He tells Dogs Monthly: ‘If I don’t win the mayoral election, I will definitely get another dog to keep Coco company.’

Disastrous? Surely the Church of England should enjoy telling the European clerisy to get stuffed

The EU inquisition

Handwringing in the Church Times’ about David Cameron’s veto in Brussels. ‘Staying out of Europe is myopic,’ cries a polemic. A news story, reporting remarks by the Bishop of Guildford, talks of the ‘UK’s disastrous isolation from rest of Europe’.

If there is one institution which should understand the joy of telling the European clerisy to get stuffed, should it not (Henry VIII and all that) be the Church of England?

Among those signing a pompous round-robin letter against David Cameron’s Euroscepticism this week was former Foreign Office mandarin Lord Kerr of Kinlochard.

What a piece of work he is: a director of Shell (which paid him 224,000 euros last year), and Rio Tinto ($201,000), as well as being a director of Scottish Power and Scottish American Investment Trust, plus a member of an advisory board at arms dealers BAE. All that before we even consider his Whitehall pension. Ka-chingeroo.

No doubt his corporate employers think Lord Kerr highly respected. At the House of Lords this is no longer entirely the case. When he stands to talk about Europe these days, the House groans. The other day he was heckled (unusual) with quavery bleats of ‘noooo!’ and ‘too long!’

'Always volunteer to write first drafts', said ex-PM Harold Wilson

Mr Wilson's words of wisdom

Brian Mawhinney, the former Tory chairman, passes on advice he received, as a young MP, from Harold Wilson. The ex-PM said: ‘Always volunteer to write first drafts.’ Why? Because although bosses will tweak details, the basic structure and ideas of the first draft usually survive.

Last week’s Feltham by-election was a setback for my regular correspondent Dave Bishop, alias Lord Biro. He stood for the Bus Pass Elvis Party and came ninth. Out of nine. His lordship, whose main policy was ‘Scrap EastEnders, bring back Top of the Pops’, did not have an easy campaign. He started by leafleting the wrong constituency and then went down with food poisoning (sabotage?). While canvassing an elector he was thrown out of the Sawyers Arms by a barmaid. ‘Your behaviour is anti-democratic!’ argued our would-be MP as he sailed out of the door.

He later added a line to his manifesto: ‘Turn the Sawyers Arms into a Pound Shop.’ Yet still, mystifyingly, he lost.

Setting the target

Politicians continue to splurge out money, so let us start Waste Watch. Please send me examples of foolish public spending.

To open the batting: a builder friend in the South-West was recently asked by the authorities to do some work near the M5 where expansion is planned. A badger has made its sett nearby. My acquaintance is being paid £180,000 to construct a contraption which will ensure that the badger is lured to different sett. For that money, they could have bought the creature a council flat.